


Stand By, Stand In

by zoicite



Category: White Collar
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:14:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plenty of people had given Mozzie plenty of good reasons to say sayonara to Neal Caffrey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand By, Stand In

Plenty of people had given Mozzie plenty of good reasons to say sayonara to Neal Caffrey. The letters F, B, and I should have been reason enough. They were for most people.

Maybe Mozzie just wasn’t as smart as most people. Maybe Mozzie had been kidding himself about that strong preservation instinct he’d always felt certain he had.

Or maybe there was an exception for everyone and Mozzie had found his.

Honestly, he was beginning to wonder if there was anything he _wouldn’t_ do for Neal Caffrey.

He’d stuck by him through prison. He’d outlasted Kate. Not even the FBI could chase him away, though they’d succeeded with everyone else. Mozzie was it. The only one that Neal had left from before. Before Suit, as Mozzie thought of it. Before Suit and After Suit. Mozzie wasn’t going anywhere.

But, those other chicken shits whispered in his head, what had that loyalty got him? Mozzie was way too involved with the feds. Way too involved. It got him searching for Kate Moreau, who had never been much of anything but cold to Mozzie. Then, when Kate died, it got Mozzie a top spot in the quest to avenge her death. It got him more sleepless nights that he had the entire time that Neal was safely in prison. It got him the cold shoulder from a good quarter of his previous contacts. And eventually it got him this.

Neal’s mouth on his. Neal’s hands removing Mozzie’s glasses and setting them on the table, returning to slide under his shirt.

Some days Mozzie thought that this alone almost made up for the rest of it.

They didn’t talk about it. A conversation wasn’t needed and anyway, Mozzie knew Neal well enough to know why they ended up here. He hadn’t needed to hear Neal whisper the Suit’s name to understand what was going on.

No, Mozzie had it figured out on the first night. Well, sort of. He’d thought it was about Kate. Because Neal was a mess about losing Kate. It was pretty much the only reason Mozzie agreed to it.

One of the only reasons Mozzie agreed to it.

It was one of the reasons Mozzie agreed.

They’d been standing on Neal’s roof. He’d started to take it for granted, rarely bothered to look twice at the view. But Kate was dead and Neal was back from prison for the fourth time and so they stood on the roof and sucked the cool New York air into their lungs. Neal’s chest moved with it, big heaving breaths as though he’d been going through smog withdrawal.

“I wanted both,” Neal admitted earlier in the evening. “Kate was waiting and then Peter was there and I wanted – I don’t know what I would have done. If I’d have chosen to get on that plane or come back to this.” Neal gestured toward his ankle.

Mozzie didn’t know what to say. If Neal had boarded that plane, he wouldn’t be standing here. Neal and Kate, gone in an instant, consumed by explosion. Mozzie hated that Neal probably would have thought it a fitting ending to go out with Kate, to go out like that.

But it hadn’t happened. Peter Burke had once again saved Neal’s life, this time just by being there when Mozzie wasn’t. Saved his life just because Neal had somehow come to care too much about the man that put him behind bars.

Mozzie was starting to think that maybe _he_ cared too much and when he walked to the edge of the roof, Neal followed.

“I’ve always thought it strange how well we can see the Chrysler Building from here,” Mozzie said. “Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it?”

Neal ignored Mozzie’s question. He put a hand on Mozzie’s shoulder and when Mozzie turned, Neal leaned down and kissed him. Mozzie didn’t ask why. He’d thought Kate, but it didn’t take him long at all to figure out that it was Burke.

It didn’t matter. If Neal needed him for this, Mozzie was here, just as Mozzie had always been there.

“Stay,” Neal would say and Mozzie stayed. And so what that he was spending more time at Neal’s place than he was in any of his own. He’d stood by Neal through everything else. This was just another thing. Eventually Neal would find someone new, someone young and smart and impressionable, and he’d forget about this thing with the Suit. Until that happened Mozzie would be here.

And really, who was Mozzie to complain when Neal came home from a long Suit-filled day at the office, stripped off his jacket, and came to kneel between Mozzie’s knees where Mozzie sat at his couch? Who was Mozzie to stop Neal from unbuttoning his pants, pushing them down just far enough to give room for his hands, for his mouth? And if Neal was thinking about someone else then that was fine too. It was better than Neal actually going to the Suit with this.

Mozzie didn’t think Peter Burke was a bad guy. A government puppet, yes. A Suit, definitely. But a good guy underneath that. He cared about Neal, despite spending years hell bent on bringing him down. They’d become friends, Neal and Burke, and when it was important they trusted each other with their lives. Even Mozzie could see that. He didn’t trust the Suit with much, but he trusted him with that.

It didn’t matter though. Neal was on a leash for four years. It wasn’t a good place to be. And friendship was one thing. Caring was one thing. Caring was a far stretch from what Neal wanted, what Neal begged for, calling Mozzie by Peter’s name.

By day Mozzie ran errands for Neal, pushed forward on Kate’s death, did the things that Neal couldn’t do with the government tracking his every move.

But the day was over and now, comfortable in Neal’s apartment, Neal leaned in and kissed Mozzie hard. Mozzie, lost in thought, didn’t expect it and he knocked his wine glass, jumped when he heard the crash. They turned and watched it spill out in a puddle of red across Neal’s table.

“Leave it,” Neal said and began to peal off his clothes.

Most evenings they did this. Mozzie ate dinner with Neal, let Neal kiss him over glasses of wine, made Neal laugh if things started to take a turn toward the serious. They weren’t moonlight dinners and I love yous. They’d never be that. The current situation was beneficial to both of them, an arrangement, small pieces of a relationship that didn’t add up to anything.

Mozzie pressed his open mouth to Neal’s back and he thrust against him, tasted salt and the soap that Neal had ordered from France on some stupid whim. Neal never smelled like French soap before Peter Burke caught him. Neal spent less time in fancy suits then, more time blending in. Mozzie moved against Neal and wondered vaguely if Neal thought that was what Burke wanted, a show piece, a trophy, or if the suits and the soap were for Neal himself.

Neal groaned beneath him, sounded impatient. The suits and the soap were for Neal. Mozzie wasn’t sure why he’d even question that. The suits and the soap were pure Neal even back when Neal spent most of his days blending in with his uniforms and his jeans.

There were times when Mozzie missed that Neal. But now wasn’t one of those times, not with Neal bringing him back to the present with a growled “Come _on_.”

“Okay,” Mozzie said. He didn’t have to be told twice and he didn’t need elaboration from Neal to know what Neal wanted. Mozzie positioned himself and thrust in hard, his groan an echo of Neal’s as he felt Neal surround him, hot and ready. He found his rhythm, a little too hard, a little too fast, and he listened to Neal’s ragged breath, the whimper when Mozzie’s fingers dug into his sides.

When Neal spilled over his own palm, he bent his head down toward the bed, his words rushed, a gasp, but still audible to Mozzie’s ears. “Oh, God, Moz.” And then again in a new arrangement of the same three words.

“Oh, God,” Mozzie repeated.

One more thrust, two, and Mozzie followed Neal, shuddered to a finish. He collapsed onto the bed beside Neal and threw the condom unceremoniously to the floor. They weren’t supposed to be moonlight dinners and I love yous. They were spilled glasses of wine and used condoms tossed onto antique rugs.

It was close enough.

“What are you smiling at?” Neal asked him, stretched out beside him, his breath hot on Mozzie’s cheek.

“What do you think?” Mozzie asked, but he tried to suppress it now that he’d been caught.

Neal shrugged and pressed his mouth to Mozzie’s bare shoulder. He felt Neal’s lips smile against his skin, a response. Mozzie let a fraction of his own smile return now that Neal’s face was safely tucked away from view, just a small moment of satisfaction.

This, Mozzie thought. If he was being honest with himself, and at the moment he was, he knew that this was the reason he did it.

One of the reasons.

Because once in a while the Suit was forgotten and Mozzie’s name was the only name that spilled from Neal’s lips.


End file.
